


Voir Dire

by Liquid_Lyrium



Series: Nemo dat quod non habet [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Anxious Crowley (Good Omens), Confessions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Footnotes, Holding Hands, Love Confessions, M/M, Other, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 16:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20799365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liquid_Lyrium/pseuds/Liquid_Lyrium
Summary: There's always more beneath the surface when it comes to Aziraphale. Crowley's known that for over six thousand years. The angel is the very incarnation ofmore.So it stands to reason that there's more to the trial in Hell than what the angel let on, but now they havetimefor more. More than just furtive meetings and stolen lunches.Perhaps, even, time enough for a real conversation.





	Voir Dire

**Author's Note:**

> _Voir dire is a legal phrase for a variety of procedures connected with jury trials. It originally referred to an oath taken by jurors to tell the truth, i.e., to say what is true, what is objectively accurate or subjectively honest, or both._ \- per Wikepedia.
> 
> Edit: Footnote links are now all in proper working order!

After lingering at lunch they finally leave the Ritz. It’s nothing at all and the greatest miracle as they hold hands and amble slowly back towards the idea of Mayfair, but the possibility of Soho or the Bentley remain open. They take a slight detour and walk past all the designer clothing shops. Last names in sleek fonts plastered all down Bond street that angel at his side only recognizes a handful of.

Crowley stares in open longing at the array of shoes in the Louis Vuitton display, face and hands plastered against the glass to get a better look. Mostly so he can refashion them later, out of nothing. It has a variety of shoes from ankle boots to four inch stilettos, the latter of which seem to make Aziraphale nervous.

“My dear, not that you wouldn’t look stunning in any of those… I feel like I should remind you what happened the last time you wore stilettos—”

Crowley rolls his eyes, and his entire head for good measure. “Not this again.”

“You _ did _ tell me to bring it up any time you looked at anything with a heel more than two and a half inches,” Aziraphale locks his hands primly in front of himself.

“It was a broken ankle.[1] Not the end of the world.”

Aziraphale lets out the softest huff of a laugh. “The things you do in the name of aesthetics.”

“At least my sense of aesthetics changes more than once a century.” Crowley peels himself from the glass finally, and bumps his shoulder against the angel’s.

They resume their slow walk, alcohol still burning brightly in their veins like starshine. Crowley is doing the talking, and it’s the angel’s turn to listen after regaling Crowley over their meal, smugly telling Aziraphale about the intense corporate rivalries he’s set up and encouraged here over the years. Helping Aziraphale connect the dots to some of the older names along the street that he might have a snowball's chance in Heaven at recognizing. Crowley suddenly stumbles, intending to take them across the street, but Aziraphale is stuck in place, like an anchor.

Crowley frowns, and follows Aziraphale’s stare.

In the display window of yet another designer brand Aziraphale has never heard of[2] is an ostentatious, surreal display with a mannequin in a bathtub.

Crowley blinks behind his sunglasses, and follows the faint tug of the angel’s hand as they get closer to the display.

“It rather was like this.” Aziraphale lays his hand on the glass thoughtfully. The display is even more bizarre up close. The window is full of _accoutrement_ that is certainly trying to say _ something _ about new beginnings, or baptism, or renewal, or washing things clean. Maybe.[3]

“Gaudy and tasteless?” Crowley doesn’t need to ask to know what Aziraphale is talking about. “Yeah, sounds like my lot, alright.”

“A very public display,” Aziraphale adds, not disagreeing with Crowley’s assessment. “There was a glass window where the other denizens… well. I did get to scare them by flicking water at the window. Rubberneckers, the lot of them.” There’s a quiet, half-smile on the angel’s face which vanishes after a moment.

Crowley eyes the display suspiciously. “What a coincidence, huh?”

“Is it?” Aziraphale turns to look at him, a brow raised in question.

“I bloody well hope so. Seems ineffably rude otherwise,” his lip curls in a sneer and he glares upwards out of habit. The angel has a good laugh at that, but something about it sends a twisting tension in the extra vertebrae of Crowley’s spine. Like a key winding. Not relief. “C’mon, let me take you home.” He tugs Aziraphale’s hand and in a few steps they’re outside Crowley’s flat despite the fact that it is much farther away from Bond Street than that.

He’s not sure why it was his flat, other than the fact it was closer. His flat is not _ home_. The closest thing he has to one is holding his hand. Home squeezes his hand gently, as he notices Crowley glancing between them.

“Got to take care of the plants,” Crowley mutters, suddenly remembering their existence.

“It’s nice to get out of the bookshop,” the angel squeezes his hand again as they approach the lift. Giving the demon assurance where he hadn’t asked for it. Presumptuous bastard.[4]

Crowley suddenly feels like he might weep with relief. That faulty connection in his legs threatens to give out.

They don’t say anything as the lift brings them up higher. Aziraphale links their fingers together, gripping his hand with a terrible ferocity that Crowley can’t bring himself to protest.

He holds his breath as he leads Aziraphale down the hallway. He swallows as he opens the door and leads the angel in for the second time. And maybe Aziraphale is right about the stilettos because he feels a weakness in his ankles as he realizes that having the angel over isn’t a one-time thing. It’s a two-time thing now. Officially.

Once in six millenia can be waved away as an aberration, but twice? Twice is a choice.[5]

“I forgot to ask,” the angel has finally relaxed his grip a little, staring down at their hands, fingers still loosely entwined with Crowley’s, “how was my trial?”

“Er-” Crowley freezes. He hasn’t ever lied to Aziraphale before, not for lack of imagination, certainly, but he had always chosen to keep mum when circumstances would have required lying to the angel.

His imagination had also never failed him, but here he is. Flat-footed, brain stalling like he never allows the engine of his Bentley to do in winter. _ Shit, shit, shit, shit what do I say? ‘Oh well there was Archangel Michael in a barrister’s wig…’ Wait, nope, not Michael, Uriel? _

But, Aziraphale comes to his rescue, with a weary, sad smile. “I was joking. Of course I know there wasn’t a trial.”

Crowley doesn’t laugh.

Aziraphale shifts, his shoulders wiggling, weighed down by wings in another plane of existence.

"Angel-"

“It makes sense, really,” Aziraphale continues voice pitched just a little too high. “I mean, your lot did invent the profession of lawyering, after all.” The weak smile he pitches at Crowley sends cracks through the heart he doesn’t need.

He tugs the angel a half-step closer, “Yeah, but it was your side who invented the idea of prosecution.”

Aziraphale tuts, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Don’t remind me. Gabriel was insufferable for two and a half centuries after that.”

Crowley continues to gently pull Aziraphale further into the flat, his voice sounds very far away as he stares at the angel. “Yeah, because he’s a real peach right now. ‘Spect I’ll be inviting him over to tea any day now.”

Aziraphale snorts at that, genuine amusement crossing his features, “I like peaches." The playful banter doesn’t set Crowley at ease.

It seems too familiar. Like looking in a warped mirror.

Finally, he pulls the angel down onto the sofa. Angled towards each other, their knees touch. Crowley rests his free hand on the back of the couch in a fist, his other still holding Aziraphale’s. Like the angel might suddenly remember himself and pull away.

He stares at Aziraphale’s face from behind the safety of his glasses. They had shared their triumphs easily enough, but not what came before.

“Tell me about the trial,” Crowley says the words softly, not sure they were the right ones, but he’s so painfully curious now. Not only to understand what it is bedeviling his angel, but because he suddenly needs to _ know _ for himself.

“It wasn’t fair,” the words leave the angel’s mouth before he can stop himself.

Crowley smiles, he doesn’t mean to, but it happens anyway. It’s the same smile that creeps out every time Aziraphale surprises him with belief and conviction after six thousand years. “Course not.”

Aziraphale glares at him, his eyes blazing with poorly contained heavenly fury and grace. “Well it _ wasn’t!” _

“I suspect that was the point,” Crowley let go of Aziraphale’s hand and carefully let his palm come to rest on the angel’s knee. Like a cautious bird coming home to roost.

“It was awful, you had no defense! They let me get a few words in edgeways, but mostly it was listening to all the good... bad... all the things you’d done they didn’t like. It was claustrophobic, dark, and gracious that fellow Hastur has an odor about him. And Lord Beelzebub’s… aura rather makes one feel… itchy.”

Crowley let his thumb rub along the angel’s knee, suddenly not caring about the injustices of Hell at all. “They made you listen to Hastur whinge about me for hours on end? Better you than me.” The serpent shakes his head, “I’d have been broken in minutes by that torture. Probably beg them to carry out-” Aziraphale’s hand catches his wrist in a punishing grip.

** _"͔̅Ḑ̰̻͗̾̌o̬̳̞̼͗̏̓͆ ñ͓ō̘̥̚ṫ̨̩͋͟.̦̆"̣͇́͞_ **

Crowley opens his mouth, but thinks better of it and nods. “Right… sorry.”

The angel softens his grip and gives it a sort of guilty caress with his fingers.

“Please… I can’t bear to hear you say such careless things about yourself.” There is no heavenly fury or reality-bending power behind these words, unlike his last. Just a gentle plea. The demon feels his skin shrink and itch as he realizes that there is no caveat like _ today _ or _ for now _ coming.[6]

There was a long silence and another question dawns on Crowley.

“Anything about you and me come up at trial?” He can't help but be curious, given how fixated Heaven was on the subject.

“Sorry?”

“Our,” Crowley rakes his teeth across his lips and takes a gamble, “fraternization?”

“Oh.” A touch of color at Aziraphale’s cheeks. “No. Not directly, anyway. Some miracles you performed were mentioned, but not nearly as many as you would expect.”

“Hm. Our Arrangement probably never occurred to them. No imagination whatsoever.” Crowley finally unfists his hand on the back of the couch and lays it flat.

“It was a charade… but you did have a trial. And a verdict given by your peers.”

Crowley lets out a single chuckle, “A verdict decided before it started, but yes. You can’t say I didn’t have a trial.” He stretches out his leg and lets their ankles brush.

“I suppose if you squint hard enough a mob can pass for a jury,” the angel stares down at his lap.

There are things Crowley wants to say about fairness versus the absolute rule of Heaven and the lengths that Hell will go to try and prove that their brand of authority is somehow better, but he… doesn’t.

He’s never seen Aziraphale look this small and tired.

“Why did you ask me about a trial if you knew there wasn’t one? You’re not in the habit of asking questions you already know the answer to.”

Aziraphale rolls his eyes, “Please. We’re over six thousand years old, that’s _ all _ we do. Besides... Those are the only safe sort of questions an angel can ask. Isn’t that what you’d say?”

_ Yes. _ Crowley bites the inside of his cheek. “C’mon, angel.”

Aziraphale stares at his knees again, contemplating his answer a long while before, finally, “I suppose I had just hoped otherwise, really.”

The hand on the back of the sofa lifts of its own accord, hovering just beside the angel’s cheek, not quite daring to touch, “Hope? That’s a four letter word, angel, and a cruel one at that.”[7]

Aziraphale just gives him that sad, weary smile that is as much a mask as his sunglasses are. “My nature, I suppose. Wanting to think the best of them.”

“I tried to do that for you,” Crowley admits, and he lets the very tips of his fingers touch Aziraphale’s jaw. “Tried to give them your Grace, even though I didn’t think they deserved it at all.”

“Oh Crowley, did you?” Aziraphale gushes at that, tipping into the touch, spirits perversely lifted for reasons Crowley can’t comprehend. Not even after six millennia of knowing this other being.

“Course. I mean, I breathed fire at them a little when they failed to pass the test.”

Crowley feels Aziraphale’s chuckle against his lips, suddenly aware of their brows pressed together. He squeezes Aziraphale’s knee as though anything could ground him. 

"Thank you." The words pool against Crowley's mouth and he shudders.

"It's not like I had a choice," Crowley bites his lip, feeling terror yawning in his bones.

"Oh but you did, my dear boy." Aziraphale’s hand is suddenly pressed against his cheek, perfect and plush, “All that hellfire, and you snuck Upstairs with Heaven none the wiser? You had choices.”

Crowley averts his gaze behind the lenses, “They’d have known-”

“Crowley, you could have killed all the archangels and probably a good portion of the Heavenly Host-”

“Heavenly Host wasn’t there,” Crowley bites out, unable to help himself. _ Your execution was as private as mine was public, the bastards. Trying to sweep it under the rug. _Fuck what Gabriel said about making examples of traitors. It had been personal.

“-But you didn’t,” Aziraphale finishes, hurt by the revelation but undeterred by the interruption.

“Probably should have,” the serpent grouses. “Would’ve been easier. Wish I'd thought of it. That's what I get for inventing hindsight-"

The angel has the audacity to interrupt him as he starts building up a good head of steam, “But Crowley, you _ didn’t. _ That’s the whole _ point. _ It didn’t even _ occur _ to you! You’re a demon and…” Aziraphale pauses to smile, “And that’s not a bad thing to be.”

It’s like Aziraphale has a hand around his throat. Choking him of air he doesn’t require, but got used to somewhere along the way.

“...What?”

“My dear, you had every right… every reason to want to hurt those Upstairs but you didn’t… for my sake.”

Crowley’s heart feels like it’s trying to escape his chest, violently. Or else it’s trying to explode like a pulsating water balloon of flesh. He wonders if his corporation is finally dying, giving out after three hundred and seven years.[8]

“Yeah, well for the record I don’t give a toss about anyone Downstairs so don’t go expecting me to fall all over myself for you leaving them alone.”

"We are different—and that's _ wonderful. _ And I'm sorry it took me so long to see that design of the universe, but Crowley… I love you," the angel lets out a breath, like he’s just lifted a great weight from his shoulders.

"You're a fucking angel. You love everything." He's never hurled that word like an insult before, but he can't help how it bitterly hisses out of him. _ Don't do this to me. Don’t make me listen to this. Don't hurt me. Don't. Don't. Don't say it. Don’t tell me these things now. Don't promise things you can’t deliver. _

"Oh darling boy," everything stops as Aziraphale presses his lips under one of the dark lenses of Crowley's glasses. "I know I have not been worthy of you, but please, I love you. Have loved you for so long. Over two thousand years at least, probably more."

His chest seems like it’s no longer capable of inflating properly. Clearly there’s been a puncture and his corporation will die around him at any moment. "You might have said something.[9]" 

"I was scared. To Fall, to be taken from Earth, but most of all I feared for you. I couldn't let anything happen to you." The angel rests his brow against Crowley’s. “Sometimes it was easier to convince myself that I was afraid you did not return my affections, but I never really believed that. I tried, but it never made anything easier.”

“‘Easier?’” Crowley croaks. The last time he felt this disoriented Gravity had just been willed into being. “Suppose it would be hard, loving a demon,” he wants to push Aziraphale away, but he can’t manage the trick. His hand curls around the knee beneath his palm.

It doesn’t bear thinking about the burning sensation along his lash line, or the way his vision blurs.

“Oh my dear, you were never the problem. Never you.” The angel runs a thumb along his cheek and it feels like a burning blade plunged into his chest.

“And you _ really _love me?” It’s the cruelest four letter word the demon has ever dared contemplate. Ever since he was cast out and cut off from Hers. He wonders if they're in a New Universe entirely. Did Adam have that much power?

There is the barest brush of lips against his chin that sets the serpent’s heart trembling, like a glass bauble threatening to fall off a shelf in the middle of an earthquake. “I can say it as many times as you need. I can spend the rest of eternity doing that, if you like.”

Crowley’s always been full of questions, but he must seem positively stupid with them now. "As a _ demon _and not… not as an ex-angel?"

"Only insofar as being an angel was part of your history. I love _ you _ Crowley. All of you, as you are." This is more than a minor reset of reality. The world going on after Armageddoff. Crowley can’t reconcile the idea that Aziraphale loves him _ because _ he's a demon, not in spite of it. After all this time and so many careless comments. It can’t be true. Not even in his wildest fantasies has he ever allowed himself to imagine that.

The demon is pulled out of his head by the weight of a perfect hand on the outseam of his trousers, halfway up his thigh.

“Hngk.”

“Too fast?” Aziraphale flinches back, and a whine escapes Crowley’s chest as that warmth retreats.

_ I don’t know anymore. _ Crowley clutches at the angel’s knee. It probably hurts as much as Aziraphale’s grip did on the way up to the flat, but the angel is too polite to say anything. The world is even more inside out and upside-down than it was this morning when he was wearing the principality’s skin.

It takes Crowley a few tries, but his mouth and larynx finally cooperate. “...Kiss me?” He’s never sounded more desperate or uncool in his entire life, and he can’t bring himself to care.

Aziraphale’s smile is radiant. More dazzling than any star Crowley placed in the cosmos. “Of course but… would you be willing to remove your glasses?”

Crowley is fairly certain he’s died because his arm doesn’t respond and his chest feels hollowed out and achingly empty.

“Crowley? You don’t have to if you don’t want to, I just-”

“Need help,” he says thickly.

“Of course, my dear boy,” Aziraphale reaches between them and gently plucks the glasses away. Crowley feels naked, despite all the times he’s been around the angel without his shades.[10]

Aziraphale sets his glasses down with such care on the coffee table. So different from the last time someone else plucked them off his head. It’s harder to meet his eyes, Crowley finds, and he stares at the tartan bowtie. Familiar, hideous, and comforting all at once.

“Still with me?”

Crowley meets Aziraphale’s eyes, hazel and full of every shade of brown and green on Earth. He forgets how to breathe, and tries to inhale three times in a row without letting the air out of his lungs.

“Yeah,” he finally wheezes out. “Kiss me,” Crowley asks again in a whisper, afraid he’ll lose what courage he’s found.

Blessedly, damnably, Aziraphale leans in and covers Crowley’s lips with his own. Everything goes still and quiet. _ Oh. _

_ I’ve been here before. _

It’s like coming home. Or home has come to him.

The last time he felt this at peace he was placing stars across the universe in constellations that spanned galaxies. Spinning nebulas into being that would birth more stars. Floating in the dark with the gentle lantern-light of his creations.

Kissing Aziraphale feels like _ making _ something again, and he almost chokes for it. Aziraphale’s hand cups his jaw, taking his whimper in stride.

Crowley pulls back, gently kissing Aziraphale’s lower lip as they part, “Don’t… Don’t ever say you’re not worthy, angel.” The demon follows the quiet gasp with his mouth and he tries to kiss Aziraphale senseless, but he just sees stars scattered behind his eyes again.

They part lips just enough so that Crowley can throw himself around Aziraphale, and force him back on the couch, legs tangling hopelessly together. Crowley manages to wiggle his boots off over the arm of the couch. “Don’t lump me in with them,” he presses a fierce kiss to the angel’s neck. “You’re everything, the best thing in all bloody Creation,” he presses a desperate kiss to Aziraphale’s chin and groans a bit as he feels a fist dig into his jacket and hand clamp onto his waist.

He slithers out of the jacket and chucks it aside. “You don’t need them,” he kisses Aziraphale fiercely, trying to push aside his sudden flare of anger as Gabriel’s callous smile slips into his thoughts like a smug ghost. _ Don’t want to think of any of those wankers right now. _

Aziraphale reaches up and touches his cheek as they part lips again for completely optional oxygen. “I’m sorry,” his panting stokes Crowley’s ego just a bit.

It’s also making it difficult to think. “What for?”

The angel averts his gaze. “That you finally… That you had to go back and have them… treat you like that,” Aziraphale flicks his eyes towards the demon again. Trying to tell him _ something _ that he can’t quite read.. unless... 

He laughs, despite himself. “Oh, angel. That isn’t home anymore.” Aziraphale’s wounded, guilty eyes tell him that he guessed right. “I’m not interested in going back,” he bites his lip and he wonders for a moment if Aziraphale still considers himself to be part of Heaven… despite everything.

Aziraphale finds one of his hands and threads their fingers together, “Then let’s not go back, ever again.”

It’s been a long time since Crowley had any of his prayers answered, and he won’t give Her the satisfaction of gratitude. Besides, She isn’t the one answering his prayers anyway.

“I’ve got home right here,” Crowley admits, his voice rough and splintered. It’s the closest he can come to saying it, after years of holding it back, hiding it, shoving it down.

Aziraphale hears him, and kisses him again. Crowley closes his eyes and tries to eliminate every atom of space between them. All he can see are supernovas and nebulas behind his eyelids; stardust in every unsteady breath traded between their lips. He kisses the angel with the intention to create enough stars to make another universe for them to settle into.

And for once, for the demon with too many questions, everything makes sense.

* * *

**Rude Notes:**

1 Despite having them for several centuries legs are still challenging things for Crowley. He had always likened it to being like faulty wiring with a fussy connection that would go out without warning. This metaphor now makes more sense after the invention of electricity. [ return to text ]

2 Dolce & Gabbana.  [ return to text ]

3 A small, cramped note inside the window proudly proclaims how the mannequins are sourced from sugarcane instead of traditional plastic, and how excited they are about their new line of sustainably sourced clothes to be sold alongside the existing lines that hadn’t cared (and still do not care) a fig for sustainability until it became a hot and marketable buzzword.  [ return to text ]

4 And entirely correct.  [ return to text ]

5 Except, of course, in the Beginning where only one instance was a Choice and one had to live with the Consequences ever after.  [ return to text ]

6 As someone who recently lived through the terror-inducing thought of going through the rest of eternity alone, without the other, Crowley realizes that he should have known better than to joke about his own demise in front of the angel.  [ return to text ]

7 Crowley wonders sometimes if it’s the last remaining echo of the Divine Choir that has him so often end up drunk and waxing philosophical in front of various artists and musicians. Freddy Mercury. Hozier. Ryan Tedder. Brendon Urie. Carly Rae Jepsen.  [ return to text ]

8 Unlike Aziraphale, Crowley has discorporated several times throughout history, and would have many more times over were it not for the actions of a certain angel. The last time was in 1712 during the Hamilton-Mohun duel. Crowley has been burned as a witch twice, murdered in his sleep, accidentally given his corporation alcohol poisoning, and once died in a bar brawl started over a particularly spirited and crooked round of The Royal Game of Ur. Aziraphale once despaired that Crowley was willing to throw his corporation away over a bad haircut.  [ return to text ]

9 "-Asshole" remains implied, but perfectly understood.  [ return to text ]

10 And without his clothes. Ah, how he misses the days of ancient Greece sometimes.  [ return to text ]

**Author's Note:**

> This was an expansion of a [meta post](https://liquidlyrium.tumblr.com/post/186786002110/its-so-good-how-heaven-and-hell-conduct-the) I made on tumblr and decided to kind of explore it a little more in depth in fic form bc why not?? Also Crowley 100% took over even tho this was supposed to be about Aziraphale (though in many ways it still is). I also want to thank Frankenmouse and Mirror for looking at this for me!
> 
> If you couldn't read the glitch text Aziraphale simply said _**"Do not."**_


End file.
